Penn State announced the school had sold out all 21,000 student section seats for the upcoming season, the first with new head coach James Franklin at the helm. If there is a battle for student section attendance, Ohio State has the upper hand in the Big Ten East Division this fall.
Ohio State has claimed to sell close to 30,000 tickets to students.The numbers are in- OSU students bought 29,614 ticket pkgs for 2014 Buckeyes football! Up 13% from 2013 #bestdamnstudentsintheland #gobucks
— OSU Ticket Office (@OhioStateTix) June 24, 2014
“The student demand was strong and we reacted by not ending the sale at the set allotment,” Brett Scarbrough, assistant athletic director for ticketing and premium seating, said in a release, according to Cleveland.com. “The additional seating in Ohio Stadium allowed us the opportunity to sell more student packages and to also have some inventory available for the single game sale.”
It helps that Penn State and Ohio State have two of the larger stadiums in the country, which allows for more seating made available to students of course. Students should be easy to sell tickets to at programs like Ohio State and Penn State, but the real attendance winners will be determined once it is seen how many fans actually turn out for games this fall. Penn State has seen attendance dip in recent years but Franklin is on a mission to make sure there are 107,000 fans in Beaver Stadium for each home game this fall.
Given Ohio State’s chances to be a playoff contender in the first year of the College Football Playoff, there should be plenty of fans filling up Ohio Stadium this fall as well.